


In these moments when you sing me to sleep

by wintermute



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, First Time, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-14
Updated: 2013-01-14
Packaged: 2017-11-25 11:45:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/638559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wintermute/pseuds/wintermute
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Moments were all Eames had. They were all he ever thought he could have, given the nature of his occupation. And then Arthur came crashing into his place in London that no one was supposed to know about.</p><p>Or, the one which Eames was being angsty and Arthur was scared and sex kind of just happened.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In these moments when you sing me to sleep

**Author's Note:**

> This totally took me by surprise. Was on my way home driving and the version of Asleep from Sucker Punch soundtrack came on. Between that and rewatch of Inception last night, it just kinda happened.
> 
> Unbeta'd, unedited. I think this is the first time I've ever considered Arthur/Eames...

In the end, that was all they really had.

Moments.

The kind of jobs they did, the kind of lives they led, the kind of men they were… that was really all they could have.

Moments, the fleeting bits of time and memories of the good in their lives, were the only things they could hold on to. Everything else left, died, or simply faded away.

Moments, like the one where Arthur smiled just before the sharp pinch of the needle and the familiar rush of the sedative into his blood stream.

“Go to sleep, Mr. Eames.”

Moments, like when they were on that plane, about to land, and Arthur turned in his seat and they shared a look of camaraderie, of mutual admiration and respect, of the beginning and the end and everything in between collapsing all into a single point in time. Then Arthur nodded, and the moment was gone.

It was times like these, when he sat alone in the dark just before the sun came up, that those moments were the most precious to him.

He never knew whether he’d see the sun rise of the next morning. Or hear the tweets of the bird that nested right outside the window of his London flat. Or feel the way blinding fog of midnight left damp blotches on his cheeks as he strolled and stumbled out of the bar.

Or if all of it were just an illusion of someone else’s dream.

That was his life, and he’d learn to hang onto the moments, because that was all he really had left.

He never really figured out why Arthur liked calling him Mr. Eames. It wasn’t like Arthur called Cobb Mr. Cobb, or referred to anyone else this way for that matter. And it wasn’t said with respect but rather a cheekiness he didn’t quite expect from a man like Arthur.

Arthur, who liked everything in their proper places Arthur.

It was raining again, like most mornings in London in the winter time. The thin needles of drizzles, persistent and continuous. And unlike most who lived in London, he actually quite liked the rain. The way it felt on his skin, the dreamscapes could never quite render it, even in his own. The way it pelted down on the sunroof above his living room and the sound it made, the rain was slightly bigger than usual. A storm in the brewing.

His buzzer rang, accompanied by insistent banging on the wooden door. 

At first, he was content to just ignore it. Must be someone who got the wrong place. No one was supposed to know about this place. This was his real home. A place he came back to when he wasn’t in some strange part of the world living in hotel rooms for weeks on end. The one place in the world that was safe from the nightmares and dreamscapes.

Supposedly, anyways.

He waited for a few seconds but the banging hadn’t stopped. He sighed and resigned himself to go and see what the big fuzz was all about.

Pulling his door open with a reluctance and annoyance usually reserved for the job, he was genuinely surprised at what he saw.

Or whom, rather.

“Arthur?” He still couldn’t quite believe his eyes, even though he’d secretly flipped the totem in his pockets a few times, feeling the familiar edges and the weight of the thing to make sure it hadn’t been a dream.

And it wasn’t. “What are you doing here?”

Arthur was wet, his unkempt three-piece soaked through and through, like he’d been standing out in the rain since God knows when. The look on his face was one lacking his usual focus and sharpness, his eyes wide and his gaze adrift. Lost. Like he wasn’t himself.

Eames felt his protective instincts kick into place in a tick. What the hell happened to him?

“Arthur,” Eames tried again, slowly bringing a hand up to palm Arthur’s face. “Are you all right?”

The chill he felt on Arthur’s cheek worried him. He’d always known Arthur to be someone who could take care of themselves, whether in a firefight or in his personal life. To see Arthur in a state of complete disarray was not just shocking. It scared Eames to death.

The touch of his palm seemed to wake Arthur, who shivered once and looked up, eyes barely focused enough to recognize Eames.

“Eames…”

Eames watched Arthur’s lips part slightly, his name on a breath, before alertness finally took over the gloom in his brown eyes.

“Shit,” Arthur swore as he began to shake with the wet cold. He pulled his suit jacket tighter around him and turned. “I shouldn’t have come here. I’m sorry… I… I need go.”

Arthur’s stuttering words made Eames frown. What the hell happened to the smooth-talking, answer-for-everything Arthur? “Like hell you do.”

Without much effort, Eames pulled Arthur, still soaking wet, into his flat. He stood the man on his door mat so he wouldn’t drip all over the place, before he pulled back.

“Stay right there,” he forced Arthur to look at him, and didn’t continue until he was sure Arthur was completely focused. “Stay. And don’t even think about leaving. I swear to God I’ll kick that pretty arse of yours into next week if you dare to move a muscle. Got it?”

Eames waited for a few seconds after he nodded his acknowledgement, making sure the other man wouldn’t try to make a run for it, before he hurried into his bedroom and came back with a big fluffy towel and a few rags he’d reserved for cleaning. Piling the rags near Arthur’s feet, he ruffed the towel over the man’s head, taking as much moisture out of his hair before he started stripping the wet mess off of Arthur’s shivering body.

With Arthur’s shirt and all three pieces of his suit lying wet on top of the rags and his body mostly dried, Eames finally wrapped the towel around Arthur’s shoulders and pushed him towards the bathroom in his wet undershirt and boxers.

All the while keeping his mind absolutely focused on getting Arthur warmed up and dried so his thoughts wouldn’t stray into places he had no business thinking about.

The clenching hold of worry in the pit of his stomach didn’t lift even after he’d thrown a cold and shivering Arthur into the shower and under the hot spray.

What the hell was going on?

He leaned back against the frame of the bathroom door facing away from the shower with his hands at his hips, listening carefully to keep an eye on Arthur without invading the man’s privacy.

He’d never seen Arthur like this. Like he was completely lost and helpless. The whole scenario just didn’t fit the model of Arthur in his mind.

Arthur was always polished, well-spoken. Did everything with an intense focus that he admired. The only times the man was without that near clinical precision was when he was annoyed, frustrated enough that the Arthur beneath the mirror mask came out for a brief moment before going into hiding again.

Like he said, moments.

Moments when Arthur glared at him for stealing a sip from his precious morning coffee or being annoying during a briefing.

Moments when he found Arthur hunched over a pile of research in the wee hours of the morning, sound asleep after a long night working.

Moments when they were both pinned down in a firefight against the mark’s militarized projections and they looked at each other, and the grin on Arthur’s face made his heart race…

He tilt his head back, hit the wood with a dull thud that helped focus his thoughts to the present. He needed to stop thinking about things that would never happen in the real world.

The sound of the shower stopping made him alert. He straightened up without looking at the man coming out of the shower. It didn’t stop his imagination from descending into the gutter, though. He strangled a moan before it bubbled up from his throat.

“Feel better?” he said into the air. “Arthur?”

There was no reply from the bathroom. Eames sighed. He should’ve known Arthur wouldn’t make it easy for him, intentional or not.

He turned and forced himself into the bathroom, keeping his eyes on Arthur’s face rather than his naked form, wrapped under a bath towel. Ignore the water dripping from his hair onto his bare shoulders, ignore the lean muscles that was usually hidden under hand-tailored suits, ignore the vulnerability oozing out of the man

Not that it was any use. Eames had all but given up on trying to control his body’s reactions. He just hoped that Arthur wouldn’t notice the tent in his saggy track pants.

“You’re going to be the death of me,” Eames swore under his breath before he tugged at Arthur, pulling him out of the bathroom and into the bedroom. The man’s skin had warmed back up to a more acceptable level and his thin lips no longer looked pale and purple from being out in the rainy cold.

He threw a pair of fresh boxers, a t-shirt and some track pants in Arthur’s direction after setting him on the bed. They were probably too big and too long for Arthur, but it’d have to do. Eames was not about to put himself through more visual torture of look-but-can’t-touch. “Put those on.”

That was when he noticed that Arthur was still trembling.

After he finished dressing, Arthur wandered out into the living room and perched himself on one end of the sofa, curling up into a tight ball. Eames followed him out, but instead of sitting down, he went into the kitchen and put the water on the burner. He took down a french press, measured out enough grounds, then set two cups out. He might be British, but he’d always prefer the bitterness of black coffee over tea.

Contrary to popular belief, Eames was a man with an abundance of patience. He had to be to be a good forger. To take the time to learn the nuances of a person, to mimic the intricacies of one’s mannerism. He’d wait until Arthur was ready to talk.

“I’m scared.” Arthur finally said, as Eames shut off the burner and poured the boiling water into the french press.

“Scared?” Eames asked, confused. What did Arthur have to be scared of?

“I haven’t slept in three days.” The sound of Arthur’s voice sounded so distant, so distraught, it tugged at Eames’s heart.

“Maybe coffee isn’t such a good idea,” Eames tried for humor, and was relieved when Arthur let out a small chuckle.

“You know caffeine never had any effect on me,” Arthur said, his voice warmer and more normal than before.

“Then why do you drink so much of it?” Eames frowned as he walked carefully back to the sofa, setting a mug in Arthur’s outstretched hands.

“I like the taste and smell of it.” Arthur shrugged.

“So you want to tell me how you ended up on my doorstep at five in the morning when you aren’t even supposed to know about this place?” Eames pushed, hoping that Arthur was ready to talk.

Arthur took a long sip of the hot brew, then set it down on the coffee table. He was drowning in Eames’s cloths, but Eames couldn’t help thinking how right he looked in them.

“I can’t sleep,” Arthur said after a long silence. “Every time I get close to falling asleep I snap awake scared.”

At that very moment, Eames would love nothing more than to pull Arthur into his arms and chase away his demons.

“I kept thinking, ‘what if I can’t wake up?’” Arthur continued, his gaze staring off into a corner. “I know it’s irrational to feel that way. It’s not like I’m on a job with the damn needle in my arm.

“I tried everything. Alcohol, sleeping pills—no, not together—sex… hell, I’ve even tried smoking pot. Nothing worked. I haven’t slept a wink for three straight days and I don’t know how much longer I keep it up.”

Watching Arthur come this close to breaking down completely as he buried his head to his knees, was about the most heart-wrenching thing Eames had ever experienced. 

“What if I can’t wake up? What if something happens on the next job, or the one after that, or the next one after that? What if something happens and I get stuck down there in that nothingness?”

Eamse could see the sweat of pure fear dripping from his forehead as his body began to shake uncontrollably.

“What if you get stuck down there?” Arthur looked up, his brown eyes bright and unfocused with the moisture that’d been collecting as he locked his gaze with Eames. “What if I mess up and you get stuck down there forever?”

Eames tried resisting the instinct and urge to pull the man into his arms and whisper sweet nothings to him just to calm him down. He knew in his head that he shouldn’t. He couldn’t. But he’d never been one to listen well enough to the rational part of his brain. He reached over for the other man before his brain could stop himself.

Arthur’s breath hitched at his sudden moves. His body went stiff for a brief moment as Eames pulled him into his lap, then relaxed against Eames’s body when he started to stroke down his back with a soothing hand.

“Ssh…” Eames cooed when he felt the lingering resistance in the way Arthur’s hands tightened into fists above his shoulder. “You’re okay, poppet.”

“Eames…” Arthur’s voice was muffled and shaky as he buried his face against Eames’s neck.

Eames didn’t know what to do except to hold onto the younger man for dear life. He’d had the same questions during that job but he hadn’t let it bother him. He’d always taken a more apathetical approach to his own future and tried to live in the present. In the moment. He’d deal with it if and when it happened to him, and not before. But Arthur was never like that. It was one of the things that Eames loved and hated about the man. He always had a trick up his sleeve, but he always tend to overthink things.

None of that mattered right now, though. Arthur was having a crisis and he’d came to him. He didn’t go to Cobb, or Ariadne, or Yusuf, or god-forbid, Saito. He’d come to him.

Except… what should he say to Arthur?

“I know what I’d do if you got stuck down there,” finally, Eames spoke. Arthur wasn’t shaking as badly as before now that Eames had him in his arms. That was a good sign.

Eames looked down at Arthur’s upturned face, smiling softly, in a way he knew he’d never done in front of Arthur before because the man was staring at him like something miraculous had happened.

“If something were to happen and you got stuck down there,” Eames continued after pecking a kiss to the top of Arthur’s head without thinking. “I’ll follow you in. I’ll find you and bring you back.”

Eames’s heart skipped a beat when the body in his arms froze. Had he said the wrong thing?

“You would?” Arthur asked, his voice filled with an uncertainty that made Eames feel like someone had punched him in the gut. He’d always thought that Arthur’s self-reliance and independence was because of his chose profession, but now he wasn’t so sure. The way his words almost sounded like a plea made Eames wonder if there was something in Arthur’s unknown past that shaped him into this iron man, seemingly impervious to everything.

Well, almost everything.

“Yes,” Eames answered, without hesitation or doubt. “I would.”

Arthur was silent for a long moment.

“What if…” Arthur said, suddenly, then paused. “What if what happened to Mal…”

Cobb never told them the truth, but that didn’t mean they didn’t or couldn’t find out. Over the past few weeks since the inception job, they’d met up with Yusuf and Ariadne a couple of times. And while Ariadne refused to reveal Cobb’s secret, she was no con men like them. Between what Arthur could dig up and what Eames had tricked Ariadne to unknowingly tell him, they had a pretty good picture of what had happened to Mal in limbo.

“It won’t.” Eames held Arthur tighter against him. He wouldn’t let that happen. Ever.

“Hypothetically speaking,” Arthur pulled away slightly to frown at Eames. “What if it did?”

Eames was relieved that a part of Arthur’s brilliance seemed to have come back to life, but the thought of losing Arthur forever scared him shitless.

What would he have done? Would he do what Cobb did?

Fuck! He and Arthur didn’t even have a relationship. What was he thinking?

In the end, Eames had nothing to say but the truth. The truth that had been glaringly obvious to him since day one, that he tried so hard to bury under everything else so he could still do his job without getting everyone killed.

The truth that he, John Eames (yes, it was John; it was his grandfather’s name and he blamed his mother for suggesting it when he had no say in the matter), had been head over heels in love with Arthur the point man since the day they met.

Eames took a deep breath and let it out. To comfort Arthur, he’d have to tell him the truth. He just wasn’t sure if Arthur could handle the truth. Hell, he didn’t know if he could handle Arthur knowing the truth himself. But, it had to be done.

“Then I’d follow you down. All the way down.” Eames reached up and laid his palm over Arthur’s face. “Wherever you end up, that’s where I’ll be.”

To hell and back again.

Eames watched as Arthur’s eyes widen in shock, his lips separate slightly to suck in a surprised breath at the plain truth laid out bare for all to see. Say something, please! Eames begged in his head but they seemed to be frozen in the moment, neither of them saying anything.

The next thing he knew, Eames was pressing against Arthur in a liplock. He was kissing Arthur with a passion he didn’t know he was capable of and Arthur was kissing him back in the exact same way. He would never forget this moment.

It must be a dream, because he couldn’t remember how they got to this point. He wanted to check his totem to make sure that this was really happening, but the way Arthur’s body was melting against him made it impossible for him to think beyond picking the man up and taking him to bed.

Which was exactly what he did. The way Arthur’s breath landed on his shoulder, hot and moist reminded Eames of the fact that he’d never bothered to put on a shirt before he answered the door earlier.

Not that it mattered at all. Shirt or no shirt, the way Arthur was holding onto him like a drowning man holding onto a log and the way his body arched into him told him everything he needed to know.

He snuck his hands under the hem of Arthur’s t-shirt, fingers scorched by heated skin, and pressed the man closer to him. The hot shower earlier had taken away the cologne he usually wore, and all that was left was the clean scent of the man mixed with a tiny bit of Eames’s scent on the shirt. The combine effect of the mixture sent Eames’s head spinning with arousal.

Their lips entwined and neither of them wanted to let go. They only paused so Eames could strip the t-shirt off of Arthur’s body.

Moments. Utterly, absolutely precious moments.

Like when Eames sucked and bit at a spot on Arthur’s neck that made him scream, his knees weak with overwhelming pleasure.

Like when Arthur reached into his pants and wrapped his slender fingers around his thick cock and Eames almost came at the simple touch.

Like when Eames let out a needy groan at the way Arthur dropped kisses all over his body.

Like when Arthur’s body tightened into a beautiful arch when he finally sank into his tight hole.

Like when he felt just how in sync their body had become, right down to their hearts beating in step with each other.

Like when they climaxed together, their orgasms two waves crashing into one another in an earth shattering bang.

Like now, as he watched Arthur finally drift quietly into sleep, and he felt completely at peace with what had happened.

He played gently with the soft, dark hair plastered damply over Arthur’s nape and watched Arthur shift, unconsciously, to try and move closer to him. Long limbs wrapped themselves around his body possessively. He smiled. Without waking the man, Eames carefully extracted himself, did as much cleaning up as he possibly could, before slipping back into bed. His smile widened when Arthur sought out his body heat and wiggled closer.

There in the dim light of dawn, he reached out and wrapped his arms around the other man, whose body fitted around his like two pieces of puzzle.

He felt content.

Eames knew that come daylight, when Arthur woke, he’d probably be gone as soon as he could put himself back together. And then things would carry on, business as usual. They may work a job together again, and they’d never mention this morning. Eames would smirk at Arthur, who’d get annoyed at his smirks, until the job was done.

Or, Arthur could disappear entirely. The man was good at looking for information (Eames still didn’t know how he found out about this flat), because he was good at hiding things. If he wanted to disappear, there wouldn’t be a soul in the world that could find him.

And if he was very, very lucky, which given his past record, entirely unlikely, Arthur would decide to stay. Just for a bit. Just enough that they’d share enough moments to last him until they next meet, and then create more memories of moments…

Enough to last a life time.

Because, after all, that was really all they had.

Just one moment to the next.

Eames really hoped that this time, he’d be lucking enough to get the latter.


End file.
